by Michelle Proctor, Agent 67

Despite being intrigued by everything 2012 for some years now, I’m not keen to experience the disaster hype of the just-released Hollywood movie, 2012. In contrast, even with its worrying flaws, the 14-part webcast offered mid-year by Drunvalo Melchizedek (author of Serpent of Light: Beyond 2012) offers a positive route through the daunting Mayan prophecies.

Drunvalo was allegedly chosen by Don Alejandro, ‘the living Dalai Lama of the Maya’ * to share on behalf of the Maya their 2012 message, which he reveals toward the end of his extended webcast. According to Drunvalo, the Mayans believe that reduced magnetic fields will cause at least 30 hours of extreme darkness without even the light of the stars to guide us. During these 30 black hours, the layer directly beneath the earth’s crust will apparently ‘melt’ so that the earth’s crust will slide along it and create an earth pole shift.

When light returns, each country will apparently be situated elsewhere on earth. For example (by my own fabrication!), Australians might discover that Australia is located where previously Russia was. Instead of reaching for sunblock to protect ourselves from the elements, we might need to reach for thermal underwear.

The Mayan message is that their ancestors have memories of significant earth changes such as  pole shifts and have helpful information on what to do in such cases. This has been passed down through the generations, especially through Mayan star lore, which climaxes with the 2012 end-date. The Mayan focus on 2012 has helped provide a deadline to keep us wondering about and learning from the past, as well preparing for future earth changes.

So why should we listen to the Maya? For a start, they weren’t even around at the last pole shift which was apparently some 700,000 years ago. Secondly, if the earth is going to go through a major cataclysm like a pole shift, it seems there’s not much we can do about it, other than survive or die!

That’s not the message of the Mayans. They encourage us to find ways to stay calm throughout the 30 (or more) hours of darkness so that as few of us as possible die of fright. Apparently it was fear that caused most deaths in previous earth-change phases recorded by the Mayans, even if those phases were not necessarily earth pole shifts.

It seems that the message of that Maya is that if we would like to still be around after 2012 to contribute to the new world and its fresh start, we need to stay calm throughout the 30 hours of pitch darkness. And perhaps this is why Don Alejandro chose Drunvalo as a spokesperson – Drunvalo has been teaching for many years now how to stay calm and in the heart in times of crisis. If we prepare for this time, then perhaps we can be like ocean surfers who contain their fear, ride huge waves and experience blissful transcendence.

Yet many commentators are suspicious of Drunvalo’s intentions in broadcasting his 2012 web update and believe his ego has got in the way. There’s quite a debate going on in spiritual/esoteric circles right now about the integrity or Drunvalo and Don Alejandro and whether or not we should believe them.

Certainly to a mainstream way of thinking, Drunvalo is a ‘kook’. In Serpent of Light he describes how he is a ‘walk-in’; i.e. a ‘star being’ soul that entered the human body of a departing soul and took it over before the body died. That certainly sounds like a quick and original way to incarnate! Yet it also sounds like fiction.

Even so, I know from my own experience as an energy healer and my personal inner healing journey, that it’s worth considering Drunvalo’s claims. Still many of us spiritual types are gullible to differing degrees. In wanting the world to be soulful, we often forget to ask the hard questions that more scientific types might naturally ask. Yet as they say, truth is often stranger than fiction; discerning between the two is a rewarding challenge.

Of course, Drunvalo Melchizedek is not the only person with something to say about 2012. A quick Google search using the keywords ‘Books 2012 Maya’ yielded over 2 million results. A skim read of the Wikipedia entry ‘2012 Phenomenon’ mentioned some of the key authors on the topic, including John Major Jenkins, whose works I’ve read with interest over the past years.

Whether or not Drunvalo & Don Alejandro’s message is authentic at least they emphasise staying calm, unlike the recent apocalyptic blockbuster 2012. Any book, movie or other media that instils panic seems to me to be more out of touch with reality (not only about 2012, but about how to approach life in general) than ‘a kook’ like Drunvalo.

Surely it makes sense for us not to flip out, but rather to stay present to what is happening and participate in 2012, and indeed our daily lives, with conscious awareness. According to the Maya, conscious calm awareness is the very thing to focus on, not the details of the event itself (assuming a world-changing event does actually come to pass).

As an astrologer, I’ve been intrigued by 2012 for some years now. In a nutshell, the astronomical alignment behind the 2012 Mayan end date is the December Solstice Sun precessing across the Galactic Centre. It’s rare for the December Solstice Sun to align with the Galactic Centre, but in cosmic timing, not that rare. It happens like clockwork every 26,000 years. The ancient Mayans somehow worked out that the next alignment would happen in a window of time around 2012, and they encoded this information into their mythology.

Ancient cultures commonly pass on interpretations of astronomical events through myths, stories and symbols. The Mayans were no exception. Integral to understanding the Mayan end date is the Mayan sacred cross. Linda Schele in Maya Cosmos explains how Mayan sacred cross symbols generally show the intersection of the Ecliptic (the path through the zodiac signs that we see the Sun travel around Earth each day) & the Milky Way (the galaxy that our solar system is within), where we find the Galactic Centre.

This cross image is particularly obvious on the famous lid of King Pacal’s sarcophagus in Palenque, Mexico. It shows King Pacal ascending a tree (representing the Milky Way), the trunk of which is horizontally crossed by a double-headed serpent (representing the Ecliptic). Where the serpent and tree trunk meet, a cross is depicted, indicating the Galactic Centre.

t’s only in recent years that astronomers have been able to analyse the Galactic Centre and they describe it thus: “hundreds of white dwarf stars, neutron stars, and black holes bathed in an incandescent fog of multimillion-degree gas…. the turbulent Galactic Center region affects the evolution of the Galaxy as a whole.”http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2002/gcenter/index.html (viewed 20/6/08)

According to John Major Jenkins, author of Galactic Alignment, the Mayans, Hindus and Egyptians believed that periodic astronomical alignments to the Milky Way affect the transformation of consciousness. The Mayans particularly noted alignments to the Galactic Centre as markers of cataclysmic consciousness change. How interesting that science has only newly discovered that ‘the turbulent Galactic Center region affects the evolution of the Galaxy as a whole’.

In ancient Mayan mythology, the home of the gods was at the centre of the universe, so it was important for Mayans to be sure where the centre was. Some argued that the Pleiades pointed to centre or the North polar star. The conflicting beliefs got debated by the different Mayan peoples at Chichen Itza in the 9th century AD and the winning location was determined to be what they called the ‘black hole’ or ‘cosmic crossroads’. Amazingly this is the very same supermassive black hole we now scientifically know to be the true Galactic Centre.

The thrones of Maya kings were erected to align with the Galactic Centre to facilitate a direct line of communication between the Galactic Centre, where their gods resided, and the king as the gods’ human representative. The Sun was seen as symbolic of the king.

The Maya kings were really king-shamans and were required to journey the inner world to retrieve sacred knowledge and the power of rulership. Archaeological records have shown that Mayan kings used hallucinogenic mushrooms to enter ecstatic trances so that their spirits could journey to the cosmic centre. The knowledge king-shamans brought back was seen as important to moving the culture forward.

When the king-shamans died it was believed their souls were transported to the cosmic centre and reborn in the Otherworld. It was understood that eventually these souls were reincarnated into new bodies. It’s important at this point to note that in Mayan mythology, the Milky Way is the cosmic mother, and her womb is the Galactic Centre.

Essentially the cosmic father, the king, symbolised by the Sun, would enter the dark rift of the Milky Way in order to be rebirthed through the cosmic mother’s womb. At the top of the sacred tree on King Pacal’s tomb is a bird. The bird represents the transformation of the soul into a new life.

This mythic story is being played out in our galaxy right now during this window of time when the precessed Solstice Sun aligns with the Galactic Centre. The ancient Mayans believed that at the time when they could visibly track the Sun, the cosmic father, entering the dark rift at the crossroads of the Galactic Centre, one age would end, and a new age would begin.

Keep in mind that it’s only going to look as if the Sun is entering the black hole of the Galactic Centre on 21st December 2012 when it rises on that solstice morning. Our sun is actually 25,000 light years away from the Galactic Centre so it’s not literally falling into it.

Modern-day Western astrologers see the Sun as a symbol of the life spark in an individual’s chart. Yet in a country’s chart, the Sun still represents the king/queen, president, prime minister or other type of ruler. In the 21st-century the role of individuals has far greater significance than in ancient Mayan times. Back then it was only the king-shamans who went on spirit or soul journeys to the Galactic Centre and came back with information for the people. These days we can each as individuals meditate on the Galactic Centre as a symbol of the divine source and seek our own messages. Or we can collectively meditate and seek wisdom for humanity.

According to astronomers, whether the precessed Solstice Sun makes its closest alignment to the Galactic Centre on December 2012 is debatable, but we are definitely in the window of time when the precessed Solstice Sun is making its rare alignment. Whether exactly 2012 or not, this event has been forming slowly for thousands and thousands of years and is happening in a window of time between 1999 and 2018.

Between now and 2012, and beyond that to 2018, any solstice (winter or summer) is a perfect time for meditating on the Galactic Centre, yet December solstices are especially powerful times. Just be sure to ground yourself before meditating on the Galactic Centre so that you’re able to integrate any intuitive insights to continue enjoying life as a spiritual being in a human body!

Annual solstices and equinoxes have always signalled significant wheel-of-the-year turning points to humans. The ancients aligned many of their monuments (for example, stone circles or pyramids) to solstice or equinox Suns so that these days could be celebrated and the energy of those days received. The solstices happen in December and June each year. Whether we experience them as winter or summer solstices depends on which hemisphere we live in.

To my way of thinking, December 2012 carries the energy of change in the same way that full moons and eclipses do, just to a greater degree. When the energy of the Moon takes over (e.g. full moons) we’re prone to ‘lunacy’. Under a solar eclipse, the energy of the Moon also takes over and again we’re prone to anxiety, panic, hysteria and other imbalances. At the December 2012 solstice, the precessed Sun is ‘consumed’ by the ‘womb’ energy of the Galactic Centre. Perhaps this also naturally tends to encourage a fear response in us humans.

Yet what if all this womb/Moon type energy is not actually something to be feared, but something to be welcomed? Anxiety and excitement are two ends of the same energy pole. What if we’re receiving ‘excitement’ input from the cosmos but interpreting it as cause for anxiety? What if our systems get overloaded not because there’s something to fear but because there’s something amazing going on? Swinging between anxiety and excitement can be exhausting, as can staying in one extreme or the other. And according to the Mayans, it can be deadly. Finding ways to stay calm, grounded and centred sounds like a far better option to me. After all I’m keen on surfing the 2012 wave, if or when it comes.

 

References

* ‘the living Dalai Lama of the Maya’ is a term taken from Drunvalo Melchizedek’s website: http://www.onelotus.net/html/live_broadcasts.html, on 30 November 2009.

Friedel, Schele & Parker, Maya.  Cosmos:  Three Thousand Years on the Shaman’s Path. William Morrow & Co, New York, 1993

Jenkins, John Major.  Galactic Alignment: The Transformation of Consciousness according to Mayan, Egyptian, and Vedic Traditions. Bear & Company, Vermont, 2002

Melchizedek, Drunvalo.  Serpent of Light: Beyond 2012. Red Wheel/Weiser, California, 2007